“The Violence of the White Audience” – Malaika wa Azania and TO Molefe Add to the White Literary System Debate
Authors and public intellectuals Malaika Mahlatsi, aka Malaika wa Azania, and TO Molefe have responded to the heated debate around the “white literary system” which was sparked by Thando Mgqolozana this past weekend at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.
The author of Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation writes in an article for Times LIVE that the FLF has shown her for the first time in her 23 years what it means to “suffocate in a pool of white privilege”.
Azania reflects on her experience at literary festivals as a first-time writer and their elitist and exclusionary nature towards people who cannot afford to attend these spaces.
Read the article for the author’s view on the violence of the white audience in Franschhoek:
The violence that I was subjected to by the white audience in Franschhoek left me shaken, more so because in that space few are aware of their privilege.
In both sessions that I attended as a panellist, I endured disapproving stares and shaking heads every time I made mention of the legitimacy of black rage and how it is birthed by white privilege.
In that space, I came to understand that literary festivals exist to create a platform for white privilege to anthropologise black thought.
Molefe, the author of Black Anger and White Obliviousness and contributor to Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction, wrote a post on his blog, the repository, in which he shares the experience of declining the invitation to appear at the FLF.
The author writes that he said no to the FLF a few times but at the time he was too “threadbare and too afraid for a fight” to voice his reasons.
Read the article in which Molefe gives thanks to the people who started the debate:
I was cowardly. Unlike Siphiwo Mahala or Thando Mgqolozana, I said no quietly, and without much of a fuss, to participating in the Franschhoek Literary Festival when I was invited last year, in 2014. To be clear my reasons were exactly the same as theirs. Just like Thando, I’d felt like an anthropological exhibit the year before when I stood on stage in front of an old, white audience and retold the story of how I was affected by witnessing my dad being humiliated in the late 1980s by an Afrikaans-speaking policeman.
Today Siya Skota shared a link on his Facebook page to a story by Karin Schimke in which she shares her her take on the sessions where Mgqolozana raised the issue of the lack of transformation in SA’s literary circles.
Mgqolozana responded to Skota and shared his harrowing experience of being shouted at during a panel discussion:
Read the Facebook post:
On Saturday, at the session chaired by Victor Dlamini, Andrea Nattrass of Pan McMillan shouted rudely while I was speaking. Nobody reacted. People simply looked at her and then quickly back at me. I paused. Not even the chair protected me while being abused by Andrea. So I spoke and told her to shut up when I’m talking, which, ironically, shocked every single person in the room—perhaps because a black man cannot tell a rude white woman off, but a white woman can do the reverse on a black man who is simply articulating his views.
I was told that Andrea was crying outside afterwards. She came back to me while I was still chatting to members of the audience and, still visibly furious, apologised for the rudeness, and then went on to say something I didn’t quite hear. I think she was saying as (white) publishers in SA they DO look for talent, which is supposed to be a rebuttal to my “anthropological subject” argument. Then she walked off.
Related links:
- Thando Mgqolozana Outlines 21 Suggestions for the Decolonisation of the South African Literary Scene
Book Details
- Black Anger and White Obliviousness by TO Molefe
EAN: 9780992190231
- Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction edited by Karen Martin and Makhosazana Xaba
Book homepage
EAN: 9781920590338
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation by Malaika Wa Azania
Book homepage
EAN: 9781431410224
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
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